Routledge Taylor&Francis have announced an innovative new book. Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics - Social and Cultural Tectonics in the 21st Century.



The book contains the first ever extended comments on architecture by Noam Chomsky. 

Other social, architectural and urban theorists include Kenneth Frampton, Michael Sorkin and others.

It takes on the critical issues of the day of the built environment from a social and political perspective.

It presents a new genre in academic writing, the ‘interview-article’. 

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The book is by Dr. Graham Cairns, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He is the author of eight books. 

Routledge information: https://www.routledge.com/Reflections-on-Architecture-Society-and-Politics-Social-and-Cultural/Cairns/p/book/9781472456083

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Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics - Social and Cultural Tectonics in the 21st Century

This book brings together a series of thirteen interview-articles by Graham Cairns in collaboration with some of the most prominent polemic thinkers and critical practitioners from the fields of architecture and the social sciences, including Noam Chomsky, Peggy Deamer, Robert A.M. Stern, Daniel Libeskind and Kenneth Frampton. Each chapter explores the relationship between architecture and socio-political issues through discussion of architectural theories and projects, citing specific issues and themes that have led to, and will shape, the various aspects of the current and future built environment. Ranging from Chomsky’s examination of the US–Mexico border as the architecture of oppression to Robert A.M. Stern’s defence of projects for the Disney corporation and George W. Bush, this book places politics at the center of issues within contemporary architecture.

The ‘interview-article’ is a variation on the interview format that deepens the scholarly potential of that particular mode of dialogue. Extensive notation - often narrative in tone - is interwoven within the text to offer supplemental information and alternative argumentation and in this regard it represents a continuation of the evolving scholarly tradition of the footnote as academic tool laid out by Anthony Grafton. In addition to these narrative commentaries, these interview-articles are accompanied by full bibliographies and specific references entwined within the text. Contributors are also encouraged to develop discursive answers to questions that they are subsequently given the opportunity to mould into more considered essay type responses.